The Why's Of Chess

As I look through a chess book, the main thing that I want to see is an understanding of why moves were made. Or, more accurately, of why a move is considered bad. For this reason, I was disappointed with "Chess Strategy for the Tournament Player".

I had some high hopes for this book and considering that it is one of the few educational chess books carried by my local library, was extremely hopeful. The book does outline some very important key elements of basic strategy but the examples left me frustrated. For the one examples that were full games, the notations would be full of "?" (typically meaning a questionable or bad move) but there were very few if any explanations as to why these moves were questionable.

As I move forward and try to learn about chess and truly understand it, I think it is vital for questionable moves to be pointed out and the reasons behind them identified. So, I would suggest that anyone save their time and skip over this book. There are many other books out there that have to be better.